From Good Soldier To Activist

Chapter 5

Cold Warriors

The Passing Of A Way Of Life

Fifth Of Eight Parts

From Good Soldier To Peace Activist

Retired Navy Capt. William Yates had once commanded a Polaris submarine, a machine that carried more explosive power in its 16 missile tubes than all the bombs dropped in World War II.

He had never questioned the need for such weaponry. He had never felt guilty about being at the helm. If the order had ever come to launch, he would have launched. He was, by his own reckoning, a true Cold Warrior.

But something happened to Bill Yates the day they commissioned the USS Florida.

The Electric Boat dock in Groton was crowded with people gathered to welcome the ship formally into the U.S. Navy. Sailors in sharp white uniforms stood with hands clasped behind their backs. A warm breeze ruffled the red, white and blue bunting draped on the speakers' platform.

Yates was excited to be among the invited guests. His submarine career spanned three decades, beginning in World War II aboard a submarine that had been launched in 1918. Now, on June 18, 1983, he was next to the latest Trident missile boat, the most advanced sub in the world.

The featured speaker was Paula Hawkins, a Republican senator from Florida. "Many people mistake the purpose for weapons such as that we are commissioning here today," she said. "We call them warships, and yet their very purpose is to preserve the peace."

It was the height of the Reagan military buildup. Defense spending that year would exceed $290 billion. The Trident alone cost $1.8 billion. But Hawkins said that such expenditures were needed to combat Soviet aggression around the world.

"The missiles and ships such as USS Florida are vital not only to preserving the peace, but also preserving our freedom and our way of life," she declared.

Yates looked around the crowd. Crewmen's wives sat with children on their laps. Young officers stood at ease in white gloves and ceremonial swords. People were nodding and smiling.

Yates suddenly found himself thinking, "What pure crap."

"If that ship sank," he thought, "as long as you got the crew off, it wouldn't make a nickel's worth of difference in our national defense."

A tall, slender man with 32 years of Navy experience, Yates was not an obvious candidate for the peace movement.

A native of California, he had joined the Navy in 1941 in a fit of patriotism after Pearl Harbor. After discovering that he got seasick on destroyers, he volunteered for submarines.

He was assigned to the S-33, which was already obsolete by the time he and his crewmates took it to Dutch Harbor, Alaska. They were assigned to hunt ships off northern Japan. He was the sonar operator.

It was rough duty. Weather conditions were extreme, with gales, rain, snow and heavy seas common. The sub was not designed for longrange operations and had inadequate food storage. By the end of the trip the cook could be seen trimming green mold off hunks of meat.

While trying to spy on ships off the coast of northern Japan, the S-33 was depth-charged. The Japanese dropped them in strings, like TNT firecrackers. If you could withstand the terrible noise the first time, the next time was easier.

But Yates liked the submarine service. Only volunteers served, and only the best were selected. There were few incompetents, few malcontents. There was great camaraderie. So when he had a chance to apply to the Naval Academy, and was accepted, he decided: The Navy would be his career.

He returned to the submarine service after earning his commission. Over the next two decades, he held some of the most important jobs in the submarine force. He was an aide to Adm. Hyman Rickover, the legendary nuclear propulsion chief. He commanded two nuclear submarines and the submarine school in Groton.

He was there at the beginning of the Navy's missile program. From 1948 to 1950, he served on the Cusk, the first guidedmissile submarine. It fired a ship-toshore missile called a Loon, which was kept in a sort of hangar on the submarine deck. Before the liquidfuel rocket could be fired, the crew had to dash out and attach the wings.

Yates was, in his words, a "trueblue Navy type." In the early 1950s, serving aboard the newly built submarine Harder, he thought that America would probably have to settle things with the Soviets the way we settled them with Japan and Germany. He told his commander, "I am sure we will go to war on this ship."

During the 1960s, as commander of the John Adams, a Polaris ballisticmissile submarine, he led six 60-day patrols during a threeyear period. The ship cruised quietly in a secret location, ready to devastate the Soviet Union if war ever came.

The ship conducted Weapons Systems Readiness Tests -- WSRTs -- at least once a week. They were very realistic. The gong sounded. Crew members were summoned to battle stations. The ship was brought to launch depth. The missile tubes were prepared for launch. Navigation was verified. The missile gyroscopes were spun up.

In a real attack, the captain and the two ranking officers would have taken keys from around their necks and turned them